Garfield has had his fair share of ups and downs throughout the years. Some outings show the love a character as fun as the 1976 Jim Davis comic strip icon deserves like the popular Saturday morning cartoon Garfield and Friends which ran from 1988 to 1994 , and others that make Bill Murray wish he looked into his contracts more before he was forced to take part two abominable live-action comedic failures. But by far one of the most inoffensive, but also the most forgettable film connected to the character is the simply titled, simply animated, simply pointless, Garfield Gets Real, a 2007 direct-to-video animated movie that nobody talks about and probably don’t even know about, and its not hard to see why. The film, not surprisingly, follows the titular fat cat Garfield (voiced by Frank Welker) living in a psychedelic fantasy world where the comic strip characters exist and create their own stories like movies into real world papers. Even though he’s the star, Garfield grows bored of the working life and wishes for a way to avoid it, which he seems to get when he discovers a tear in the world that transports him to the real world, never being able to return to the comic world. He, along with his dog friend Odie start to adjust to their new lives as regular homeless animals upon meeting a fellow stray cat named Shecky (voiced by Gregg Berger) and start to see that it might not be as fun as he’d expect it to be. The two soon learn that their comic strip is in danger of being replaced and forgotten now that both of them are no longer involved in the comic, and try to find a way to return to their old home, all the while the other characters, including his owner John (voiced by Wally Wingert) and his girlfriend Arlene (voiced by Audrey Wasilewski) work with an inventor named Wally (voiced by Neil Ross) to get through the screen and bring them back to their world. The biggest issue with this movie comes from the fact that it doesn’t leave much of an impression on either side; it’s not truly awful, but it doesn’t have anything that makes it memorable or worth a watch.  For an icon as memorable as Garfield, it’s a shame so many of his films result in such mediocre products, with this one being the prime example of stale.

The story is as lazy as it sounds. It’s the traditional ‘’there’s no place like home’’ formula, but with nothing different or unique added to it to make it stand out. It doesn’t even fully commit to the entire story, not even giving good reasons why Garfield wants to leave, and why he suddenly wants to go back again, you can very much feel its just going through a standard narrative just so that it can create something with Garfield as the focus to bank on his popularity. The idea of going between the fictional and the real worlds doesn’t work as effectively because everything is animated, meaning he goes from a cheap looking animated world to another cheaply animated world without much change, even the real world has cartoonish things that doesn’t feel normal like Russian bodybuilding talking dogs, so nothing feels distinct and separate. A cartoon character going into the real world is also a very overused and lazy gimmick, but at least when its done, there is an immediate contrast when you go from animated to live-action, here the movie doesn’t even bother to change anything. The idea of living in the newspaper and producing the comic strips like a movie is a fun idea, if not a bit over-used, operating like a Monster Inc/Osmosis Jones type of job environment where it uses something familiar in the real world and turns into something that cartoons can make an income out of, but it never takes advantage of the idea and simply pushes it aside for the real-world plot. It addresses Garfield’s popularity and influence in the newspaper which could have led to fun satire and commentary, but once again, its never addressed fully and you can tell that this movie isn’t smart enough to tackle elements like this in any meaningful manner. It may be pretty ridiculous to think that a movie like this would be something that could have some deep satire or commentary, but it does have the original writer of Garfield, Jim Davis, working on it, so it could have if it was better handled. Since the film is very clearly for kids, the generic plot could be overlooked, but the film’s writing is so bland and not at all trying to be smart that it leaves a forgettable mess of a product and doesn’t give kids anything worthwhile.

Having the original writer connected to the film means at the very least, the recognizable characters will act like the characters. The best part of this film, as it should be, is Frank Welker as Garfield. Doing a surprisingly close recreation of Garfield’s original voice actor, Lorenzo Music’s voice (who had passed away six years prior to this film) he captures the lovable lazy cynic that everybody enjoys watching to a tee even if the writing for him is at best passable. Even when he doesn’t have any good material to work with, his delivery is so perfect that you are willing to go with it and enjoy how he’s delivering it, although it would be nice if he actually had good material to work with. Odie is done fine even though there isn’t too much that you can do with him, but the addition of having him walk on two legs and slightly talking is a little off-putting, again showing how the tone and rules of this movie don’t make sense and never feel coherent. Shecky is decently fun to watch and has good delivery behind some of his lines, probably coming from the fact that he’s voice by such a prolific voice actor whose done a ton of additional voice work for several mediums between film, tv and gaming. Wally the inventor is also kinda likeable and has a fun design, even though his voice can get a little grating at times. Most of the other side characters have fine voice acting and some of them have some interesting designs that can either look cartoonish in a good way, or disgustingly terrifying because of the cheaper animation style, especially a group of chihuahuas that look like actual paralysis demons.

Since Garfield never had the best animation even on his own show, the movie’s cheaper budget has a little bit of a pass. Though even with that in mind, this animation is not very impressive to look. The film’s two directors, Mark A. Z. Dippé, and Kyung Ho Lee, have mostly been associated with very cheap animated movies throughout the years that look like bottom tire bargain-bin kids films (although Dippé worked on the visuals effects for massive movies like The Abyss, The Hunt for Red October, and Jurassic Park, and even directed the 1997 film, Spawn), but there is at least a level of creativity behind its cheapness. The film looks like something that could be played to a kindergartner and the movie feels like it was intended for that age group so it does at least offer some outlandish designs and once and a while some pretty colors, but it can’t escape some awkward and even some frightening imagery. The movie constantly flips flops in quality on how the characters look. Mainly characters like Garfield, Odie and Jon don’t look too bad in this 3D comic looking style even though they probably still shouldn’t exist in this format (comic strip characters do feel like they should stay 2D), while others look pale, have models that have horribly ugly features, and rushed backgrounds to the worst degree. The 3D models aren’t a bad idea for a movie, but it would’ve benefited from starting in 2D than transitioning to 3D in the real world for a stronger contrast. The music by Kenneth Burgomaster has some nice scores, but there aren’t many in the film so they’re easily forgotten after a while. Even with the original writer, the writing is uncomfortably lazy and beyond bare bones simplistic. Even if the characters act the way they should, they never have anything funny to say. Even for younger kids, the film doesn’t offer anything memorable in story, character, animation, or lesson, so without the great writing, it doesn’t have a strong enough identity.

Garfield is a treasured cartoon character that will continue to be loved by all, but films like this won’t be on that timeless list. This film doesn’t have any elements that warrants a viewing, but at the same time, nothing produced is truly awful, just a run of the mile lazy product for little kids. The colors can be nice, there’s a fun design every now and then, some of the side characters are okay, and Garfield is treated with respect, but the story is lazy, the animation is very low in quality and sometimes nightmare inducing, the writing is bland, most of the side characters are useless, and every lesson learned can be offered up from a simple children’s storybook. Still a lot of Garfield material to remember, this will just never be one of them. Pretty harmless, but also largely useless, it coins the term ‘’paper thin’’.

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